Serendipper wrote:That is backwards. It is the right that holds positions on faith.

The right asserts objective morality on faith / the left is only intolerant of intolerance (assertion of objective morality is subjectively immoral and a violation of autonomy)The right are absolutists / the left are relativists.The right are dogmatists / the left are evidence-based.

Abandonment of logic and reason is conditional to be conservative and for a quick easy illustration, just visit any political board and argue for a minimum wage then observe the slanderous defense void of substance indicative of holding ideas absent of evidence. Conversely, argue against climate change and see how many liberals resort to slander.

The right is essentially a group with limited education arrogantly proclaiming nobel laureates stupid by appealing to "common sense".

Simply not true.

It's the left that has absolute, dogmatic faith in their "Social Justice Crusade". Social-Justice-Warriors represent the new (Modern) religion. If you're not a gay-queer-gender-fluid then you're morally evil. If you're a straight-white-male then you're going to Hell.

Serendipper wrote:That is backwards. It is the right that holds positions on faith.

The right asserts objective morality on faith / the left is only intolerant of intolerance (assertion of objective morality is subjectively immoral and a violation of autonomy)The right are absolutists / the left are relativists.The right are dogmatists / the left are evidence-based.

Abandonment of logic and reason is conditional to be conservative and for a quick easy illustration, just visit any political board and argue for a minimum wage then observe the slanderous defense void of substance indicative of holding ideas absent of evidence. Conversely, argue against climate change and see how many liberals resort to slander.

The right is essentially a group with limited education arrogantly proclaiming nobel laureates stupid by appealing to "common sense".

Simply not true.

It's the left that has absolute, dogmatic faith in their "Social Justice Crusade". Social-Justice-Warriors represent the new (Modern) religion. If you're not a gay-queer-gender-fluid then you're morally evil. If you're a straight-white-male then you're going to Hell.

I can kinda see that, but "If you're not a gay-queer-gender-fluid then you're morally evil" means they are mad at the ones with the moral absolute that homosexuality is wrong. So like I was saying, the only evil is proclaiming something evil.

You do have a point about SJW possibly becoming a religion to be dogmatic about, but on the whole and in general, I think my categorizations are accurate in illustrating the principle differences of the opposing mindsets (some exceptions apply).

Serendipper wrote:That is backwards. It is the right that holds positions on faith.

The right asserts objective morality on faith / the left is only intolerant of intolerance (assertion of objective morality is subjectively immoral and a violation of autonomy)The right are absolutists / the left are relativists.The right are dogmatists / the left are evidence-based.

Abandonment of logic and reason is conditional to be conservative and for a quick easy illustration, just visit any political board and argue for a minimum wage then observe the slanderous defense void of substance indicative of holding ideas absent of evidence. Conversely, argue against climate change and see how many liberals resort to slander.

The right is essentially a group with limited education arrogantly proclaiming nobel laureates stupid by appealing to "common sense".

Simply not true.

It's the left that has absolute, dogmatic faith in their "Social Justice Crusade". Social-Justice-Warriors represent the new (Modern) religion. If you're not a gay-queer-gender-fluid then you're morally evil. If you're a straight-white-male then you're going to Hell.

Which is a mirror image of the Christian right attitude held by many.Any space controlled by the right has very rigid images and ideas about what a man should be like, a woman, children, a good person. The whole don't be in any way faggy, which goes way beyond sexuality. Both sides have a whole bunch of ways to be immoral, evil, shit, wrong, fucked up, should be cast down in the pit. The right has always had its own pc. Anyone who has bee in contact with it knows this. I grew up when right pc was simply taken for granted. Not in my house but out there in the world. Both pcs are faith based. Both damn.

lordoflight wrote:Omg. A member of the hive speaks. You sound like a fucking Borg from star trek.

I'm not a trekky so I'm afraid I can't relate, however if the Borg are anything like the Zerg in Starcraft, then what I'm saying about the reality of the world - whether I like it or not by the way - fits what I'm saying pretty well, sure. Come to think of it, it's a clever little scenario that the makers of the game came up with when it comes to attracting the target audience i.e. gamers. Generally gamers are outcasts who have turned away from the normal life and towards an alternative virtual one, and Starcraft presents a fabricated reality where the good guys (the human "Terran") are fighting against an infesting malignant conformity that's threatening their way of life, yet on the other hand the alien "Zerg" might be more tempting to play in order to achieve a more angry catharsis through destroying humanity altogether. Perhaps there's a similar sentiment behind the Borg in Star Trek, you tell me.

lordoflight wrote:Adaptation? No it sounds like you advocate collectivist pacifism. Like merging. As in fluids.

It's a sad reflection that I am often met with when I present reality as I see it objectively, and it is assumed that people including myself are only ever out there to sell their biased subjective agenda - which is often taken for granted by them because that is the method they are adopting themselves. I am not advocating anything. I am simply presenting how the world is, whether you/I like it or not. I am interested in truth, not a story.

lordoflight wrote:Trying living in the fucking hood for a year and then you'll think twice about not carrying. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Walk around in the hood and get shanked? Man when were the days when people actually valued their own damn lives. Even suicidal people seem to value their own lives more than these collectivist borg types. A borg could care less whether or not he has the American right to defend himself or his property. Just wants to give up his rights to a bunch of pigs like a good little brainwashed cuck. Maybe I'm getting to old. I no longer feel like I'm part of society anymore. Some of the stuff I hear just seems too insane to believe. Its like humans are another species from me. Sheep I think.

I like what little property I own being mine, but I've never once needed to actively defend it beyond locking my doors. But then, I've never lived "in the hood". From what little I know of such places, it seems that people only "get shanked" when they/others have stupidly set up "gangs" with "territories" - presumably just to feel any kind of semblance of ownership at all in a world where they own relatively very little yet they need to think of themselves as big - and you violate this arbitrary claim. Either that or some desperate guy wants things of value and you're both having a bad day - or cowardly people just wanna feel big and pick on someone just for a petty ego boost. It's all cowardly and breeds cowardliness in retaliation - completely pointless and something that you should stay away from, but admittedly should participate in to as minimal a degree as possible if you can't escape for whatever reason. Do educate me if you feel the need.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:Which is a mirror image of the Christian right attitude held by many.

I would say that both your depiction of "the Christian right" and his depiction of "the left" both apply to a certain proportion of people in the West, only the PC "social justice crusaders" aren't Left in the slightest by the very "virtue" of the Social Authoritarianism that they share with the Christian right. That's right wing, always has been. Inverting the identity of the liberal hippie into social justice warriors is ridiculous if only thought about for a second, whatever name it goes by, which seems to completely escape this fanatic to whom you're responding.

Perhaps you and Serendipper would agree with me that it's the Social Authoritarians who "have no devotion or fealty to logic and reason", and "cannot be reasoned with. Period." as he so delicately put it a few posts ago? Not "the left" in general, or the reasonable right.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:Which is a mirror image of the Christian right attitude held by many.

I would say that both your depiction of "the Christian right" and his depiction of "the left" both apply to a certain proportion of people in the West, only the PC "social justice crusaders" aren't Left in the slightest by the very "virtue" of the Social Authoritarianism that they share with the Christian right.

My experience of the Left is that they have all sorts of rules about how one should behave, and this is not just the modern sjws, but even good old communists and socialists. Not sticking out, not being selfish, all for the good of the proletariat. I mean, anything from what one does in one's free time, to how you speak about issues, to being taken to task in meetings by the group - of course in extreme forms in various communist nations - or 'communist' nations to some. Now these social rules are not the same as the social rules of the sjws but they are still rules.

That's right wing, always has been. Inverting the identity of the liberal hippie into social justice warriors is ridiculous if only thought about for a second, whatever name it goes by, which seems to completely escape this fanatic to whom you're responding.

I think there have been changes. They do paint the whole left as the violent antifas and the feminists who hate men and want to control all behavior. But what was marginal left ideas - ones I lived at, for example, a very very progressive college where I went and later worked, have now entered the mainstream. While economic radical ideas on the right have been seeping into the mainstream.

Perhaps you and Serendipper would agree with me that it's the Social Authoritarians who "have no devotion or fealty to logic and reason", and "cannot be reasoned with. Period." as he so delicately put it a few posts ago? Not "the left" in general, or the reasonable right.

Ironically there is a part of the right that says the Left have no morals. Based on the idea that they supposed to be relativists, and absolute ones. Well, welcome to the morals of the Left, Right wing. Many of their complaints are around what is happening in school. When I went to school, the social world was ruled by a hatred of anything that could be categorized as feminine in boys. Teachers attacked anything critical of certain parts of american history. I mean, they tended to get that slavery wasn't great, but they downplayed pretty much everything else, and a student raising critical opinions of current foreign policy or past actions, was in for shit. There was right wing pc all over the place, even though this was a fairly liberal set of public schools I went to.

I find that most authoritarians can do something they consider reasoning. But on both sides there is something more important going on, so they allow themselves quite a bit of flexibility, and boht think they are talking to the devil.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:Which is a mirror image of the Christian right attitude held by many.Any space controlled by the right has very rigid images and ideas about what a man should be like, a woman, children, a good person. The whole don't be in any way faggy, which goes way beyond sexuality. Both sides have a whole bunch of ways to be immoral, evil, shit, wrong, fucked up, should be cast down in the pit. The right has always had its own pc. Anyone who has bee in contact with it knows this. I grew up when right pc was simply taken for granted. Not in my house but out there in the world. Both pcs are faith based. Both damn.

What you say is true, but like I said, it's easy to test who is more dogmatic by simply arguing against each side and seeing who resorts to more underhanded tactics. I don't believe the climate change narrative, so I argued against liberals on it, yet not a single one called me a name and it was on the "no holds barred" board where insults are permissible. I found that revealing.

lordoflight wrote:Omg. A member of the hive speaks. You sound like a fucking Borg from star trek.

I'm not a trekky so I'm afraid I can't relate,

Perhaps you and Serendipper would agree with me that it's the Social Authoritarians who "have no devotion or fealty to logic and reason", and "cannot be reasoned with. Period." as he so delicately put it a few posts ago? Not "the left" in general, or the reasonable right.

Sure there are exceptions and any authoritarian would be dogmatic, but consistent with good ole "systemizing" me, I was just trying to pigeonhole everyone into a generalized polar group in order to showcase the fundamental philosophies of each side.

Silhouette wrote:I would say that both your depiction of "the Christian right" and his depiction of "the left" both apply to a certain proportion of people in the West, only the PC "social justice crusaders" aren't Left in the slightest by the very "virtue" of the Social Authoritarianism that they share with the Christian right.

My experience of the Left is that they have all sorts of rules about how one should behave, and this is not just the modern sjws, but even good old communists and socialists. Not sticking out, not being selfish, all for the good of the proletariat. I mean, anything from what one does in one's free time, to how you speak about issues, to being taken to task in meetings by the group - of course in extreme forms in various communist nations - or 'communist' nations to some. Now these social rules are not the same as the social rules of the sjws but they are still rules.

I keep hearing of such experiences with the left, but back in my day and on the other side of the pond if you're an American they were the literal opposite - it's just strange to me. I identify as a leftist because socially I believe in laissez faire. Economically, I believe in the philosophy that pluralisation undermines corruption, but that there's an inevitable and serious imbalance to a laissez faire economy, which cannot me allowed to continue.

So... am I now a rightist according to your experience? I think not. Obviously left/right is a dumb dichotomy, but in my experience I used to fit into the dumb dichotomy fairly squarely. Apparently the dumb dichotomy has severely shifted according to experiences like yours, which is irritating to me because it's essentially turned an easy way of referring to myself on its head. I argue as a leftist as distinct from a purveyor of authoritarian/totalitarian/dictatorship like is associated with the "practice" of alternative economic structures such as "Communism", which was so obviously very very horrible. To me it's obvious that the practice diverged from the theory in a seemingly equivalent turning-on-its-head.

So now I find myself unable to refer to myself as a leftist without causing severe misunderstanding, because people now associate that with authoritarianism from both SJWs and "Communism-in-practice".

I think of the right/left distinction in relation to its origin, with the "right" representing the desires of the current ruling classes and the "left" representing the desires of those who want change. Obviously sticking to rules fits with the right, and changing the rules fits with the left, but I guess this evolves as "changing the rules" gains traction. Once the left has successfully changed the rules, are they then the right? And are those who used to be sympathetic to the right now left? And what about the left who still want the rules to change to something else, or simply want the rules to change to not being there at all?

The dumb dichotomy has undergone some qualification over the years, with liberals in contrast to neo-liberals, the right in contrast to the alt-right etc. But my stance seems to have been lost. I am no hippie pacifist nor a Libertarian in economic respects, though I agree with them in social matters. Nor am I an "old-Communist" or of any such category that sympathises with any kind of Social Authoritarianism OR economic monopoly. Nor still am I sympathetic with the social democratic stance of "moderated Capitalism" associated with the American Democrats, or the "New Labour" party of the UK if anyone is familiar with that.

All I know for sure is that in both its former and current forms, I am not a rightist when it comes to the dumb dichotomy. In my view I just don't accept the change of the dumb dichotomy to its seeming current conception. What is now seen as left in my view can be quite easily contained within what formerly used to be considering the right. This is the simplest solution in my eyes.

Silhouette wrote:I keep hearing of such experiences with the left, but back in my day and on the other side of the pond if you're an American they were the literal opposite - it's just strange to me. I identify as a leftist because socially I believe in laissez faire. Economically, I believe in the philosophy that pluralisation undermines corruption, but that there's an inevitable and serious imbalance to a laissez faire economy, which cannot me allowed to continue.

I was talking about social rules, pc type behavioral rules, the humility to the group goals in the more traditional communist/socialist goals, and the like. Not economics.

So... am I now a rightist according to your experience? I think not. Obviously left/right is a dumb dichotomy, but in my experience I used to fit into the dumb dichotomy fairly squarely. Apparently the dumb dichotomy has severely shifted according to experiences like yours, which is irritating to me because it's essentially turned an easy way of referring to myself on its head.

There were hippy type lefties and I am sure they exist still, who are much more live let live, and tend towards the left on a range of political issues. (even these have rules about not getting angry, not being serious, sattvic vs. rajasic type judgments, and perhaps judgemental of anything normal - iow not fully live let live - but these types are not the most vocal or even seemingly common these days. I am not sure which side of the pond you are on, but I have seen it in the UK and the US both.

I argue as a leftist as distinct from a purveyor of authoritarian/totalitarian/dictatorship like is associated with the "practice" of alternative economic structures such as "Communism", which was so obviously very very horrible. To me it's obvious that the practice diverged from the theory in a seemingly equivalent turning-on-its-head.

Sure, but even those lefties who understood the problems with the USSR and China, still ran meetings, social events, conversations, with similar (though vastly less dangerousn and pernicious ideas). Sacrifice to the greater good of society or the proletariat. A kind of humility. Seeing many behaviors as either bougeois or too individualistic. IOW you could be against gulags and dictatorships, but still have a pc culture that had a lot of stated and unstated rules. And I often found it unpleasant, even if my politics might be similar on many issues.

So now I find myself unable to refer to myself as a leftist without causing severe misunderstanding, because people now associate that with authoritarianism from both SJWs and "Communism-in-practice".

Well, I wouldn't assume that. I was not talking about all leftists, but certain trends.

But you are correct, some people are going to take it that way.

I find it utterly ridiculous how liberals get caste as radical lefties, when nearly every liberal politician is what would have been considered far to the right on economics these days. Nixon's policies, many of them, would be viewed as communist now. The neocons have been successfully pushing things to the right economically for decades. Liberal politicians make lefty noises but they are corporate puppets just like the right wing ones.

The intentional obfuscation between left and right is brought to light by Noam Chomsky here:

As far as socialism is concerned that term has been so evacuated of content over the last century that it's hard even to use. I mean the Soviet Union, for example, was called a socialist society and it was called that by the two major propaganda operations in the world: the US, the Western one, and the Soviet one; they both called it socialism for opposite reasons: the West called it socialism in order to defame socialism by associating it with this miserable tyranny and the Soviet Union called it socialism in order to gain whatever benefit from the moral appeal that true socialism had among large parts of the general world population, but this was about as remote from socialism as you can imagine. The core notion of at least traditional socialism is that working people have to be in control of production and communities have to be in control of their own lives and so on. The Soviet Union was the exact opposite of that: working people had no control over anything; they were virtual slaves and the collapse of the Soviet Union is, in fact, a small victory for socialism in my opinion; it eliminated one of the major barriers to it and should have been recognized as such, but the term has become so meaningless that it's hard even to use.

Red Scare

A "Red Scare" is promotion of widespread fear by a society or state about a potential rise of communism, anarchism, or radical leftism. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States with this name. The First Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War I, revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement, anarchist revolution and political radicalism. The Second Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War II, was preoccupied with national or foreign communists infiltrating or subverting U.S. society or the federal government.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare

Political ideologies exist as a dichotomy and the fact that the lines are blurred is a direct result of coordinated efforts to blur them.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELTAddress Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago July 02, 1932

There are two ways of viewing the Government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776.https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documen ... -chicago-1

(And the Tories are still donning their Redcoats and utilizing their RedScare tactics straight from the Goebbels' playbook of accusing the other side of what they're doing and it's really ironic that the most robotically patriotic americans have been totally taken in by that. They are supporting, dogmatically, bullheadedly, ignorantly, the philosophies of the very enemy that was driven out the day this country became Free which makes their own patriotism is the most treasonous crime imaginable.)

There are two ways: either control is consolidated or control is spread out to the people. The labels we put on these ways are arbitrary.

1) Free-market laissez faire will result in consolidation of power lest the people make for themselves a government to stop it.

2) Governments themselves can cause consolidations of power by dictatorian/authoritarian rule.

Silhouette wrote:To an extent, this is the case when it comes to spectacles of violence - fake and real and everything in between, insofar as they attract a lot of revenue. Of course fighters aren't the richest class of people in the world, but perhaps they are being nothing more than appropriately compensated to the extent of what they would realistically be giving up if they were to lead a lesser society where competence in violence is power. "Weaklings" (when it comes to violence) being at the top appears to yield a richer society, hence why everyone wins so much more, justifying why it's dumb to carry weapons.

But of course strength and weakness doesn't only occur along the scale of violence. Strengths occur in a wide variety of scales in many dimensions. There is no such things as "strong" and "weak" in general, but there are certainly people who have more of one than the other, and there are people who have more of one than the other in more or less relevant ways to what their society currently values.But to those who have more strengths than weaknesses, yet their strengths are less relevant, they're welcome to try and push their strengths and make them relevant. But to the extent that they fail, they only prove that they aren't worthy.

It seems to me that you either have a naive idea of what violence is, or you think I have. When I say violence I don't mean fighters like MMA or such. I mean those who possess the highest capacity for violence, and are at the top of the hierarchy in their respective domains - police and military. Furthermore, violence capacity includes not only the foot soldiers, but also those who plan and coordinate violence, creating superior strategies and tools for it. Therefore by implication, also those who create and maintain the industry and the kind of social order which supports all of that. And yeah, ultimately violence, which is to say physical conflict, is exactly how strength and weakness are measured.

The other strengths and weakness are all ultimately linked to violence, no matter how indirectly. F.e. one of the most important aspects of industrial productivity is the tools for violence it produces. If one group neglected that, they would make of themselves an easy target for a group which doesn't.

Violence is an effective counter to almost everything. The only thing that is effective against violence is violence.

You seem to have re-worded my point as to why organisations don't feel fear, in order to conclude that they do. Dubious.I guess you can look at anything blurrily enough and conclude that there's no distinction, sure, I'm just saying that if you look at it closely there's a clear distinction.

There is a distinction, yes, but also similarity. Whatever, I made my point. Not interested in semantics.

Yeah, that's exactly what I would say if I was talking about myself.

If you were honest for a change. But then, if you were the kind of person who is honest, all those things would be much less likely to apply to you in the first place.

If I didn't know any better I'd suspect you're trying to shame adaptation? Adaptation is the single most important strength to possess. You don't bring boxing gloves to a chess match, and you don't bring chess pieces to a boxing match, you adapt to whatever strengths are needed, and letting yourself be weak in irrelevant areas is inconsequential - if anything it is desirable in that it gives you more time to focus on being strong in relevant areas.

If anything, the exact opposite is true, I try to shame non-adaptation, I just point out the wider scale of adaptation.

In the short-term, it may be possible to make a lot of behaviors adaptive. F.e. a group of people could aim guns at your head and order you to kill every healthy newborn infant and rape and butcher its corpse, only allowing those with down syndrome and similar retardations to survive. In that scenario, the adaptive behavior is to do as they say, or you will get killed. But it's not as simple as that. Natural selection happens at a group level too. So one can ask - is this strategy of killing all newborn infants except the retarded that this group is applying itself a good, adaptive strategy? Does it lead to our group becoming more powerful and thus better prepared to compete with other groups when it comes to conflict? Or does it weaken us? Is it sustainable in the long-term, or does it parasite on the past successes of previous, different strategies? Because through conflict, natural selection determines which group is superior, and which is inferior.

Take the guns these people are using to enforce this strategy. Will the next generations, the retards, be capable of maintaining the production of these guns, and use them just as effectively? Or will there be degeneration?

Obviously this is an extreme example, but there are many other, less extreme (and thus less obvious) things which are maladaptive, yet society adopts them anyway. Allowing retarded children to live instead of euthanizing them is one.

Some dude said: "It is no measure of health to be well adjust to a sick society", this is a correct statement.

Nature (natural selection) is the ultimate standard against which not only individual competences and strategies are judged, but those of societies too.

But of course, those who thrive on lies and parasitism and have no capacity or no desire to think about the long-term consequences, will never admit this. If a leech could talk, would it not try to convince the one whose blood it is sucking that it isn't harmful? Why would it tell the truth, when its success depends on lies and parasitism?

So believe what you want. Since reality is objective, those who are honest and share similar predispositions tend to arrive at similar conclusions anyway.

Right/left is a stupid dichotomy. The real dichotomy is: productive/adaptive/evolutionarily optimal strategy (that which leads to a net increase of a system's power), parasitic (leading to a net decrease of a system's power)

There is a large but not complete overlap between what is usually considered right and productive, and left and parasitic though.

Noam Chomsky wrote:As far as socialism is concerned that term has been so evacuated of content over the last century that it's hard even to use. I mean the Soviet Union, for example, was called a socialist society and it was called that by the two major propaganda operations in the world: the US, the Western one, and the Soviet one; they both called it socialism for opposite reasons: the West called it socialism in order to defame socialism by associating it with this miserable tyranny and the Soviet Union called it socialism in order to gain whatever benefit from the moral appeal that true socialism had among large parts of the general world population, but this was about as remote from socialism as you can imagine. The core notion of at least traditional socialism is that working people have to be in control of production and communities have to be in control of their own lives and so on. The Soviet Union was the exact opposite of that: working people had no control over anything; they were virtual slaves and the collapse of the Soviet Union is, in fact, a small victory for socialism in my opinion; it eliminated one of the major barriers to it and should have been recognized as such, but the term has become so meaningless that it's hard even to use.

This is exactly the argument that I have used on this forum over the span of many years, and not once has it been accepted.

I want to keep using it, but it seems like since it undermines the contemporary political categorisations people simply cannot handle it. Highly frustrating.

Serendipper wrote:1) Free-market laissez faire will result in consolidation of power lest the people make for themselves a government to stop it.

2) Governments themselves can cause consolidations of power by dictatorian/authoritarian rule.

Exactly. We're torn between the knowledge that laissez faire in the economy tends towards consolidation of power, and that any institution put in place to prevent this will have to be as powerful or more powerful and will therefore be susceptible to the same problem and simply be replacing the equivalent of one dictator for another. The elegance of the "Classical Liberal" ideal for Capitalism is that in some sense it has in-built mechanisms to counter this, which is the point at which pro-Capitalists stop thinking, but in practice consolidated power can easily bypass them to enough of an extent that the tendency is not prevented but merely stalled. One thing that I am working on is a better system for preventing the centralisation of power. To me, that easily places me into the "left wing" with fidelity to the term's origin because I am seeking change to the system. Due to what Noam is saying, however, I can barely even say so without causing complete confusion. It's a significant problem in my opinion.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:I was talking about social rules, pc type behavioral rules, the humility to the group goals in the more traditional communist/socialist goals, and the like. Not economics.

For sure, I didn't mean to imply you were, I just brought up economics as a contrast to the social side of things. Not doing so has the potential to lead people to think that since I'm a hippie when it comes to social things, I must think in the same way about all things, when I don't. And I don't mean to imply that this applies to you, I'm just explaining why I brought up economics. If the topic were economics and I argued against laissez faire as I do, this has the potential to lead people to lumping me in with "the left" who are authoritarian in all respects. Simplistic people like to think that the left flatly don't believe in private property, when for example I do believe in private property when said property isn't a means of production (capital). When it comes to the means of production, I bring private property into question (which is not to say I don't see the value of it whatsoever). Apologies for the over-explain, I'm sure it's not necessary for yourself, but I have encountered far too many black-and-white thinkers here.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:Sure, but even those lefties who understood the problems with the USSR and China, still ran meetings, social events, conversations, with similar (though vastly less dangerousn and pernicious ideas). Sacrifice to the greater good of society or the proletariat. A kind of humility. Seeing many behaviors as either bougeois or too individualistic. IOW you could be against gulags and dictatorships, but still have a pc culture that had a lot of stated and unstated rules. And I often found it unpleasant, even if my politics might be similar on many issues.

Sure. I understand the sympathy towards "pc culture" but I think free speech is more important. Like you were saying, everyone has "rules" when it comes to social interaction - many of them fascinatingly tacit and layered. I support this insofar as it seems to combat the inevitable difference between different peoples' points of view, and a certain etiquette is necessary in order to bridge this divide. Certain albeit minimal rules are necessary to make communication between different people possible and productive. PC culture is legitimately seen by many to overdo these social conventions because too much sacrifice is incurred by the individual in favour of enabling the group to get along. Cooperation? Absolutely, but not without sufficient competitive challenge. I would probably be in the same boat as you in finding such social events, meetings and conventions uncomfortable. I still consider myself to be as left as these people in very many respects, just as your politics might be similar to theirs on many issues.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:I find it utterly ridiculous how liberals get caste as radical lefties, when nearly every liberal politician is what would have been considered far to the right on economics these days. Nixon's policies, many of them, would be viewed as communist now. The neocons have been successfully pushing things to the right economically for decades. Liberal politicians make lefty noises but they are corporate puppets just like the right wing ones.

Absolutely. This brings me back to what I was saying above about what Serendipper was saying.

Thanathots wrote:If you were honest for a change. But then, if you were the kind of person who is honest, all those things would be much less likely to apply to you in the first place.

Honest like honestly and freely admitting that what you said was true? The only reason I didn't say what you said is because commentary on myself was irrelevant at the time to a point about violence in general. Would you prefer if I qualified every point I make about things in general with how they apply to me? Would that make me honest enough for your standards?

I think you are unnecessarily presumptuous here, and also with the suggestion that I either have a naive idea of what violence is, or assume that you have a naive idea of what violence is.This is not helpful.I am in fact not assuming anything, I am only making guesses as to how you are referring to violence from what little I know of you and from what little I have read of your words. Forgive me for not yet knowing exactly how you're speaking of violence, barely knowing you as I do, and not being able to read your mind. Is that fair of me to point out? I guessed that you would have little sympathy for some ""leftist"" (in double quotation marks) views on what constitutes violence, such as seeing anything remotely suggestive of even consensual sexual intention as "rape" or whatever other ridiculous extremes you hear about in the media. So I resorted to initially addressing your idea of violence as significantly less broad - by all means correct me without impatience.

However, on the other hand you are suggesting that all strengths and weakness "are all ultimately linked to violence", which at least sounds like you've reached a similarly radical breadth on what constitutes violence as the radical leftists, but in a different way and by different means. Perhaps I am misreading you. For my part at least, I don't think everything is ultimately linked to violence. Conflict is not constant, it is ubiquitous, sure, but not incessant - it's the exception if anything. In between violence is where many strengths lie and getting to these points is a result of strengths. To use the analogy of fighting, a fitting one for the subject of violence, the vast majority of fighting is the evasion of attacks - this is not violence. The cliché but truth of martial arts is that you are not meant to use them to cause violence, or even to defend yourself from violence whenever possible because in doing so you are too dangerous a weapon. They are instead used as a form of self-knowing and personal health on many levels. Still, these are often the people with the highest capacities for violence since weapons are something of an equaliser, and military strategists and weapons manufacturers are not violent at all without a force to use their contributions. Fighters like in MMA don't need this assistance to have a high capacity for violence, and yet given the power of the most advanced weaponry they are next to as useless as the next person. Whoever has the highest capacity for violence these days is completely situational - how are you proposing to determined who is to be compensated for what they're giving up when the weakest infant can accidentally kill the most powerful military leader if it's playing with the gun.

I don't know, I'm just playing around with what I think you've been saying. I just think it's cowardly to bring a gun to a knife-fight just as it is to bring a fighter jet to a boxing match or a nuke to a meditation class, and it's not cowardly when it's your job to bring a gun to neutralise a gunfight in order to work towards not needing to do so in the future.

Silhouette wrote:However, on the other hand you are suggesting that all strengths and weakness "are all ultimately linked to violence", which at least sounds like you've reached a similarly radical breadth on what constitutes violence as the radical leftists, but in a different way and by different means.

I don't know, I'm just playing around with what I think you've been saying. I just think it's cowardly to bring a gun to a knife-fight just as it is to bring a fighter jet to a boxing match or a nuke to a meditation class, and it's not cowardly when it's your job to bring a gun to neutralise a gunfight in order to work towards not needing to do so in the future.

In my first post in this thread I reacted to the OP as a bridging post: a post that wanted to assert something, but also a post that was a reaction to what I said in another about men who use violence in close relations. So I mocked the idea that the OP seemed to be poorly putting forward that since violence in some situations could be brave or necessary and also not based on fear, men getting into the habit of beating up people who they supposedly loved could not be 1) escalating for no good reason and 2) people who could not face what they were actually feeling. The people putting forward such a weakly justified conflation of quite different situations want to reduce all interactions to one thing, and tend not to notice symbiosis, collaboration even across species, even the merging of species: iow all those things that do not fit with their outdated survival of the fittest will to power 'darwinism'. They also seem not to understand what a social mammal, not in the damaged and 'cool' version they hallucinate, is actually like. That is one with a complete limbic system and the ability to empathise, amongst other things. It's like the two gunboys at Columbine came up with a self-justifying philosophy and then generalized it, looked on wife beaters positively out of this philosophy, and compared their psychology (the wife beaters' psychology that is) with that of Navy Seals or Cardinal Richileau.

What can one do with people who are not interested in what they are feeling that does not quite fit with their own philosophy? IOW who lack certain basic but utterly criticial intropsective skills, or really, introspective courage.

Violence is not just carried out by afraid pussies and carrying a gun does not mean one is a coward.

However beating up, especially regularly, someone you supposedly love who you are bigger and stronger than shows a need to control yourself and the other person, and apart from the skipped steps, the gun to the knife fight as you put it, that very seeking to control is about fear. Fear of what one is feeling that is not the rage. Fear of what the other person will do and feel IF they consider themselves a free agent.

And one can certainly have empathy for those fears. But if they can't even admit them and project their teenage and even younger fears and experiences into a metaphysics, can't consider that there are exceptions and that those other suppressed feelings they have are an opportunity not just a threat, there is little to discuss with them. They think, without noticing it, that their survival depends on not feeling certain things. They just ain't gonna go there. Never. And it feels like strength, this not knowing what makes them tick. And even though the left is supposed to control Hollywood, that is pussy, guilt driven men, according to them control TV and HOllywood, Hollywood reinforced this idea of what strength looks like over and over and over. And sure there are other movies that do not.

Anyway I saw in those two parts of your post I quoted above that you might be reacting similarly to a similar underlying pattern.

d one can certainly have empathy for those fears. But if they can't even admit them and project their teenage and even younger fears and experiences into a metaphysics, can't consider that there are exceptions and that those other suppressed feelings they have are an opportunity not just a threat, there is little to discuss with them. They think, without noticing it, that their survival depends on not feeling certain things. They just ain't gonna go there. Never. And it feels like strength, this

Meno_ wrote:d one can certainly have empathy for those fears. But if they can't even admit them and project their teenage and even younger fears and experiences into a metaphysics, can't consider that there are exceptions and that those other suppressed feelings they have are an opportunity not just a threat, there is little to discuss with them. They think, without noticing it, that their survival depends on not feeling certain things. They just ain't gonna go there. Never. And it feels like strength, this

But how can this be verified, other than for example through an analogy , like in Kosinsky 'Painted Bird' ?

and apart from the skipped steps,

the gun to the knife fight as you put it, that very seeking to control is about fear.

Navigate Guide

Steps SummaryJerzy Kosinski

Summary

The narrator is a young man who travels from place to place experiencing life in its rawest form. In a small village, he shows his credit cards to a young orphaned woman who washes and mends his clothes and tells her that she will never need money again if she comes with him. She follows him to the city to find a better life for herself and trades sex with him for money. The situation is reversed when he finds himself in a strange city without money and has to trade sex for food.

As a ski instructor in an area close to a tuberculosis sanatorium, he makes love to a woman patient through mirrors; the two never touch. An encounter with a woman at a zoo leads to the narrator’s picking up another woman, who turns out to be a male transvestite. A waiter at a train-station restaurant arranges for the narrator to attend a show where a woman and a large unidentified animal copulate while observers place bets as to the depth of penetration.

A grouping of anecdotes about the army includes stories in which two civilians are killed by a sniper, a group of soccer players disappear when they drive across an artillery practice field, and soldiers play a macho gambling game for entertainment. Punishment for a man who cheats in the game is to have his genitals crushed to a pulp between rocks.

The narrator remembers events that occurred during World War II but were not army experiences. As a boy, he was boarded out with farmers who mistreated him. He got revenge by enticing their children to swallow concealed fishhooks and broken glass, which killed them. A cemetery caretaker he knew had been a boxer before being put into a Nazi concentration camp; his captors let him survive so that he could entertain them by fighting with professionals, but the rules were such that no one wanted to fight against him.

When the narrator was a student at the university, he heard about a scientist who at a Communist Party reception pinned gold condoms on every guest instead of medals. At one time the narrator was banished to an agricultural...

Kosinski’s second novel, Steps, consists of forty-eight short vignettes narrated by an unnamed young man who moves back and forth between two worlds, Communist Eastern Europe and the West. The first is a claustrophobic environment of peasant villages, compulsory military service, political intrigue at a university, and the endless criticism and surveillance of Communist Party organizations such as the kind he described in The Future Is Ours, Comrade. The second, the West, especially America, is an equally treacherous environment where the narrator begins as a victim—like the young Kosinski—because he can hardly speak the language. Eventually, the narrator transforms himself from victim to oppressor. He drives fast cars, learns how to use complex eavesdropping devices, and flashes a wallet full of credit cards.

Steps, then, is the narrator’s account, in a voice that is detached, cool, and seemingly impervious to moral insight, of two related transformations of himself from the status of a character plotted against to that of a writer who does the plotting. In both East and West, the narrator begins as an outsider, speaking the language of victimization. In both, he masters the language of his oppressor and then proceeds to work his will on his enemies, first by escaping from the East, second by acquiring the possessions needed in the West to remain independent—income, credit, mobility.

Language and sex in Steps can be either sources of power or signs of weakness, depending on how the relationship between speaker and hearer, or between sexual partners, establishes itself. The narrator sees both language and sex in terms of the interaction of will. Each activity involves...

Guide

The Painted Bird

Jerzy Kosinski

However beating up, especially regularly, someone you supposedly love who you are bigger and stronger than shows a need to control yourself and the other person, and apart from the skipped steps, -------

Silhouette wrote:Conflict is not constant, it is ubiquitous, sure, but not incessant.

So there are periods when the police and military stop putting a gun to everybody's head and forcing them to obey or die or get put in a cage? We disagree what conflict is, clearly.

In between violence is where many strengths lie and getting to these points is a result of strengths. To use the analogy of fighting, a fitting one for the subject of violence, the vast majority of fighting is the evasion of attacks - this is not violence.

We also disagree on what constitutes violence. Defending yourself is part of violent conflict. Sometimes it can be just as damaging to the enemy, or even more, than an attack would be.

Whoever has the highest capacity for violence these days is completely situational - how are you proposing to determined who is to be compensated for what they're giving up when the weakest infant can accidentally kill the most powerful military leader if it's playing with the gun.

And a toddler can also press a button which activates thousands of nukes, therefore we are all equal. Lol.

Some people are more competent in violence across a broader spectrum of situations, most importantly in realistically probable situations, not extremely unlikely ones like a toddler in a room with a 1000 nukes button.

very seeking to control is about fear. Fear of what one is feeling that is not the rage. Fear of what the other person will do and feel IF they consider themselves a free agent.

Of course people seek to control their environment. And yeah, if I allow certain beings to be free agents, they will do things that I deem undesirable - you could say I fear these things, maybe that's true, whatever - the point is, they are undesirable to me, so I will want to stop them and not let them be free agents.

I'm not going to let my dog into my house and be a free agent, cause it shits and pisses everywhere. Since I don't want shit and piss everywhere (you could say I fear shit and piss), I ban my dog from going inside.

What is wrong or weird about this?

You just say it as if people are supposed to automatically consider it bad with no argument or explanation.

Noam Chomsky wrote:As far as socialism is concerned that term has been so evacuated of content over the last century that it's hard even to use. I mean the Soviet Union, for example, was called a socialist society and it was called that by the two major propaganda operations in the world: the US, the Western one, and the Soviet one; they both called it socialism for opposite reasons: the West called it socialism in order to defame socialism by associating it with this miserable tyranny and the Soviet Union called it socialism in order to gain whatever benefit from the moral appeal that true socialism had among large parts of the general world population, but this was about as remote from socialism as you can imagine. The core notion of at least traditional socialism is that working people have to be in control of production and communities have to be in control of their own lives and so on. The Soviet Union was the exact opposite of that: working people had no control over anything; they were virtual slaves and the collapse of the Soviet Union is, in fact, a small victory for socialism in my opinion; it eliminated one of the major barriers to it and should have been recognized as such, but the term has become so meaningless that it's hard even to use.

This is exactly the argument that I have used on this forum over the span of many years, and not once has it been accepted.

You've found an ally

Serendipper wrote:1) Free-market laissez faire will result in consolidation of power lest the people make for themselves a government to stop it.

2) Governments themselves can cause consolidations of power by dictatorian/authoritarian rule.

Exactly. We're torn between the knowledge that laissez faire in the economy tends towards consolidation of power, and that any institution put in place to prevent this will have to be as powerful or more powerful and will therefore be susceptible to the same problem and simply be replacing the equivalent of one dictator for another. The elegance of the "Classical Liberal" ideal for Capitalism is that in some sense it has in-built mechanisms to counter this, which is the point at which pro-Capitalists stop thinking, but in practice consolidated power can easily bypass them to enough of an extent that the tendency is not prevented but merely stalled. One thing that I am working on is a better system for preventing the centralisation of power. To me, that easily places me into the "left wing" with fidelity to the term's origin because I am seeking change to the system. Due to what Noam is saying, however, I can barely even say so without causing complete confusion. It's a significant problem in my opinion.

I was listening to Chris Hedges today who said the original idea of liberalism was to be in the middle between (presumably) the two forms of authoritarianism: plutocracy on one hand and fascist dictatorship on the other. It's quite long, but nonetheless interesting conversation on booktv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPoIprwyW0Y

a better system for preventing the centralisation of power.

The only system is a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

A recent example is a proposal that would create a new judicial branch specifically for business cases that would unclog the system, which seems like a good idea, but the problem is the governor would appoint the judges, so I had to vote no. The people may not make the best decisions in elections, but at least there is a chance and a mechanism for breaking the cycle of corruption as opposed to having a governor appoint his buddies to the bench.

Benjamin Franklin's Final Speech in the Constitutional Conventionfrom the notes of James Madison

I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution: For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views. From such an Assembly can a perfect Production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with Confidence to hear that our Councils are confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet hereafter for the Purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. https://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/pop_finalspeech.html

Simplistic people like to think that the left flatly don't believe in private property,

Thanathots wrote:So there are periods when the police and military stop putting a gun to everybody's head and forcing them to obey or die or get put in a cage? We disagree what conflict is, clearly.

Have you met a policeman? If so, were they taking turns with their colleagues holding loaded guns to peoples' heads? I mean, even as an entire force, the VAST majority of the time, nobody even has a gun aimed at anyone. Same with the military.

So maybe you're speaking figuratively? "They may as well be" (which is the whole point of a deterrent)? But even then it's only if you act in very specific ways that are by far the exception, that you break laws. For the vast majority of people, they don't even need to think twice about doing what they feel like and worrying about whether a policeman or soldier is going to point a gun at them. Maybe you and/or the people you know are constantly aching to do things that are unfortunately against the law? If so that's kinda unusual, man.

Maybe you're trying to say that only honest people are the ones who're constantly aching to do things that are against the law? Don't you know anyone who genuinely gets a kick out of doing nice things and helping people? I dunno, maybe your crowd are such edgelords that such thoughts are forbidden, in which case I feel sorry for you :\

In my opinion we're still laying out our positions, and you're still pouncing on any slightest inkling that we disagree... like I said, this approach really isn't helpful if you want to get to the bottom of things. If that's not your intention and all you're seeking to do is get one up on others, then we're after different things I'm afraid.

Thanathots wrote:We also disagree on what constitutes violence. Defending yourself is part of violent conflict. Sometimes it can be just as damaging to the enemy, or even more, than an attack would be.

So dodging a punch is inflicting violence on the person who threw a punch.... yeah maybe we do disagree after all - let's see. Perhaps the dodge inflicts mental anguish and doubt on the punching person and therefore they incur psychic damage? I dunno, man, what you're suggesting here is a long shot...

Thanathots wrote:And a toddler can also press a button which activates thousands of nukes, therefore we are all equal. Lol.

Some people are more competent in violence across a broader spectrum of situations, most importantly in realistically probable situations, not extremely unlikely ones like a toddler in a room with a 1000 nukes button.

Well, define competence. If consequence is at least a main factor if not the only one, the toddler pressing the 1000 nukes button is at the top of competence in violence...

You're trying to refer to a more varied potential to impose violence on others that's less circumstantially dependent, but like I already said, the weapons manufacturer and the military strategist that you mentioned need very specific situations to occur for their talents to bring about violence. An MMA fighter needs close-up combat, a sniper long-range... Even a certain mix of all these talents is circumstantial - which is the whole point that I was making when I took it to the extremes that I did... Sure a marine would have more capacity for violence than your average gender studies first-year, but here you are saying that defending yourself is part of violent conflict. "Sometimes it can be just as damaging to the enemy, or even more, than an attack would be" if the student ran away? :\ Which way do you want it? Is violence in everything or are some people more competent?

I dunno why I'm pressing this point, we both know what you mean, it just doesn't seem that air-tight of a point - it has tons of issues with it. That's all I'm trying to get across to you, but then I guess that's just us disagreeing and me being naive etc? Perhaps you'll at least acknowledge that my points have validity, but at this point I hardly expect humility from people here. Some have it, which is a great strength and it might even be possible to make some real progress with such people. But there is only regression to be had with the hostile.

Unwrong in the thread on women cannot be strong and victims at the same time. I posted a response, talking about how the violence those men use is based on fear, and that they are responsible for their own behavior and it is not inevitable, etc., and later that day you started this thread. I though it was a partial response to what I said - Perhaps it was a coincidence, but I took it as a response - so it seemed like you were supporting his position. He was not suggesting one should beat women, but rather that it was simply sort of inevitable, what else can a lower status man do. IOW they had no responsibility. As if only lower status men beat women, and many other problems with his post. Then your thread appears seemingly mocking the idea I raised, about those men actually being afraid to face their own feelings and so they turn to violence, but in this thread it is as if you are responding to a general claim about all violence.

By the way is anyone here arguing that violence is for afraid pussies and only cowards carry guns? I could see some new age people, some pacifists, I suppose. But I'd be suprised if someone really generalized like that here. But if they did, I will happily go and criticize that position.

Of course people seek to control their environment. And yeah, if I allow certain beings to be free agents, they will do things that I deem undesirable - you could say I fear these things, maybe that's true, whatever - the point is, they are undesirable to me, so I will want to stop them and not let them be free agents.

Of course, but this makes no sense in the context of a romantic/love relationship. To keep being around someone who you do not want to be a free agent is giving yourself a lot of work where there is nothing for you, or the other person. You become a defacto jailer on the side of your actual job. And since controlling women by hitting them is a way of avoiding all the fear of what a free agent would do, feel, say, think, you are messing up your own mind as well, rather than dealing with whatever problems you have.

Of course there are many situations where one must and does control the environment. But who wants to live with a prisoner? Time to leave or deal with your shit.

Out in the world with not-family, not friends, of course we take also sorts of steps to control things, though on the violence end, generally to defend and prevent violence and other seriously negative stuff from happening. Soldiers and police are another case entirely, and regular citizens in extreme situations where pre-emptive violence may be necessary.

You just say it as if people are supposed to automatically consider it bad with no argument or explanation.

[/quote]It related to the man who feels he needs to hit the person he supposedly loves. She ain't a dog and if she ain't using violence, he has no need to escalate to that level. And if he wants to anyway, it's time to look for someone else. Or deal with the emotions he is jumping past when he decides to hit her.

If I was wrong that you were in some way responding to what I wrote in the other thread, my apologies. My argument in that thread was specific to the situation where a man is hitting a woman he supposedly loves. (and would hold for women battering men cases). I do not have some generalizatin that people are in some kind of fucked up mental state if they use violence or necessarily in denial or skipping steps. There are many situations where I would use violence, and in a few cases have. It seemed like you took my analysis of a specific type of violence and generalized it. But perhaps you just started a thread that had no connection in your mind to that other thread. Great. I don't know who believes what you titled your thread as. If they are here, link me to a post and I'll join in being critical of that position. It's silly.

Sillyho, it's hard to say there's no conflict when you have to threaten those who disagree with your rules with imprisonment, a beating, or even death. That there is no open conflict is obviously because one party - the system's enforcers - is so much more powerful than others that no other even dares to challenge it. It's an inequality.

Maybe you and/or the people you know are constantly aching to do things that are unfortunately against the law?

Some laws don't make sense.

Well, define competence. If consequence is at least a main factor if not the only one, the toddler pressing the 1000 nukes button is at the top of competence in violence...

Yes and therefore toddlers are equal with adults. And hey, a cat could accidentally press the button too, therefore it is equal to humans. Oh wait, an apple falling from the tree could also press the button, so it is equal too.

But you'd never seriously argue any of that in practice. You're just being disingenuous and trying to spread confusion.